While likely 99 percent of the readership of this website cannot vote to re-elect New Haven Green Party Alderman Allan Brison on November 3, the world at large should know who Allan is and why he matters.

 

I have inclination to write about this because Green Party stalwart Charlie Pillsbury and his partner Allie Perry hosted a fundraiser at their newly refurbished home on Saint Ronan Street Thursday night, October 22.

 

While Charlie's house is technically not in Allan's district, some 35 people showed up to gnosh on munchies and let the mother's milk of politics flow: money. I wrote Allan a check for $50, because without Allan, my life would probably be very different.

 

In the summer of 2006, Allan Brison collected well more than 2,500 signatures to help put gubernatorial candidate Cliff Thornton on the ballot. Without Allan, Cliff doesn't make the ballot.

 

 

Re-Elect Allan Brison , continued...

 

The problem with political theater is that we never really know when the curtain falls and when the play starts again.

 

The cast and crew of "What's the matter with Connecticut?" met up for a healthcare sinecure – a sinecure being a job you don’t need to show up for, coming from the middle aged feudal position of a job in the church that didn't involve the saving of souls.

 

Sen. Chris Dodd, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, and two Obama cabinet members, former Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, now Obama's Secretary of Health and Human Services, and U.S. Small Business Administrator Karen Mills converged on Hartford.

 

The handlers selected a humble warehouse at 39 Belmont Street in Parkville, home of a successful small business, Connecticut Commercial Maintenance, Inc.

 

More than 90 people packed into this tiny, hot space, where two kayaks sat on wall shelves, and many ladders of all sizes leaned against walls covered in mudded and taped sheetrock that had never been painted.

 

Why so many cops at protests? (link)

Editor's Note: A few weeks ago, I wrote about the Charter Oak, and I went looking through my site for this story, but I had never posted it. So, from Nov. 29, 2004, here is a column about Connecticut history.

 

Nestled in a spectacular frame inside the state museum on Capital Avenue sits the Royal Charter of 1662, the one legendarily hidden in the famous oak tree.

 

"The restoration of the English monarchy under King Charles II in 1660 forced the Connecticut General Court to take action regarding the legal status of the colony," says a plaque next to the Charter.

 

Next to an etching of the long-haired King, the words "King Charles II, by the grace of God king of England, Scotland and Ireland, defender of the Faith," establish the charter. It is about five feet tall, three feet wide, and within those 15 square feet, difficult to decipher old Engish calligraphy enumerates Connecticut's powers of self-government, enjoyed by our state since 1639.

 

The Royal Charter, says the museum plaque, "renamed the General Court the General Assembly and increased from six to twelve the number of magistrates, now known as assistants. Two representatives, known as deputies, acted on behalf of each town. All members of the bicameral Genral Assembly, as well as the Governor and Deputy Governor, were elected by the freemen. The General Assembly continued to conduct all the judicial, legislative and execuative affairs of the colony."

 

Some 25 years later, Charles II's younger brother King James II sent a representative to take the charter. Charles II was beheaed in February 1685. On October 26, 1687, Sir Edmund Andros, the Crown's New England governor, strolled into Hartford Butler's Tavern demanding the charter. A long deliberation culminated in a speech by Guilford's Andrew Leete.

 

Link ...

 

W orking on Nader's 2004 presidential campaign, we endured all sorts of calls from people who once were Ralph's biggest fans, from all across the country, urging him to drop out of the race.

 

We defended Nader's Frist Amendment rights on the phone, and tried to hang up with them in under 30 seconds. Why waste time? Interoffice banter referred to these callers as chicken-shit liberals or viral progressives.

 

The name-calling allowed us to dehumanize the other, the enemy who we thought was with us, in order to protect ourselves. It's kind of easy to label Joe Schmo from San Francisco an idiot when he calls you the same for trying to actually implement the progressive policies you want.

 

But how do you respond to those you love who disagree with your policy ideals? Your friends are your mirrors, the saying goes.

 

I feed the illusion that I surround myself with people who demonstrate characteristics I want to see in myself: smart, critical thinkers who are adventurous, brave, bold, courageous, fearless, loving, caring, compassionate, generous, funny, fun-loving, mischevious, mysterious, skilled, filled with wonder and awe, real, dispensing with pretense, among other things.

 

How do I convince my mom...

 

What is the exact amount of money that will corrupt a person? $100? $200? $10,000?

 

That's what State Representative Corky Mazurek wants to know. Mazurek, a three term Democrat incumbent in the 80th district in Wolcott and Southington, won a heated August primary over challenger Karen Houghtaling by about 70 votes.

 

Mazurek's primary victory produced one of the first bumps in the road for the new campaign finance law, bumps which the Elections Enforcement Commission is determined to smooth out by the time the 2010 election cycle rolls around.

 

Mazurek, who voted against the clean elections bill back in 2005, participated in the program during the primary, and was the recipient of a contested series of mailings by the Realtors PAC, worth about $10,000.

 

Houghtaling's campaign manager Phil Sherwood wonders exactly how many of those 70 votes came from that mailer.

Link...

 

Barbara J. Ruhe of Wethersfield sent a letter to the Editor at the Hartford Courant congratulating Gov. M. Jodi Rell and I back in March 2007.

 

Gov. Rell and I bumped into each other at a parade, and we took our picture together. The Courant printed it. What a hoot!

 

Ruhe wrote: “The picture was the epitome of class on the part of the governor and grace on the part of Mr. Krayeske. Both qualities are rarely seen in the public realm and even more seldom celebrated.”

 

For that, I sent her Ruhe a thank-you postcard from Malta in October 2007, when I had the chance to express my gratitude to complete strangers who defended me in that hour of need. She didn’t have to say anything at all.

 

Fast-forward to August 2008, and I get an email from Ruhe. She’s an attorney, a Republican, and she is running for state senate against stale incumbent John Fonfara.

 

Ruhe and I set up an interview, and at the appropriate hour, I arrived at her law offices. I noticed not just my postcard from Malta, but standard CT GOP paraphernalia, like a signed note from former Gov. John G. Rowland.

Link...

 

Without demanding something, you get nothing.

 

If you’re a Zen Buddhist, perhaps that’s a great way of looking at life.

 

But shoot, not even Buddhists can find their nothing in modern America, which is why we must makes demands on the political power structure.

 

From local land use boards to the state Freedom of Information Commission to the presidential election, citizens must make concrete demands of those in power, lest they do nothing at all.

 

Last year, the Newtown Planning and Zoning Commission stopped the local Cambodian Buddhist Society from building a temple on land it owned in town. The Buddhists appealed, the superior court ratified the town’s decision, and the state Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling.

 

Link...

 

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal earns $110,000 annually, 28 places and tens of thousands of dollars behind highest paid AG Jerry Brown of California, according to LegalNewslist.com's ranking of pay for all 50 state attorneys general.

Brown, a former governor and presidential hopeful, rakes in $184,301. A minimum wage and some overtime behind him is Alabama's Troy King, who pulls in $163,744. Winning the bronze is New York's Andrew Cuomo at $155,500.

 

See the List

 

You can send a check to the Charter Oak chapter of the Red Cross, said the Governor to morning deejay today, urging citizens to contribute to the relief fund for the home fire that knocked 150 people out of 120 apartments in Norwich this weekend.

 

Can't somebody do something about this traffic, gasped the Congressman trapped on the Merritt Parkway to the morning jock about the price of gas and the situation on the highways.

 

Ain't nothing we can't handle, said the man pushing the broom to his friend as they stood under the grocery store awning, under the raining gray sky.

 

Of all the conversations I heard today, I like the man pushing the broom the best.

 

I was ready to pull out my hair by the time I was done listening to Chaz and AJ and Billy and Megan Dahl hang out with Governor M. Jodi Rell and Congressman Chris Murphy this morning on WPLR.

 

Link...

 

What are we to make of a chief executive officer of the state who sends out conflicting messages? This issue isn't going away as Gov. Jodi Rell's presses forward on her idea to eliminate billboards from state lands at the same one of her department's has purchased billboard space to promote energy efficiency.

 

I happened to come across a One Thing billboard in Stamford last week. It's funny. It was last Sunday afternoon, and I couldn't believe that laborers were hanging out on a chilly March weekend evening trying to find jobs. Who needs laborers on Sunday afternoon?

 

So I was concentrating on pulling onto the on-ramp and capturing an image of the labor pool men, probably not a safe driving move, but no less than texting while driving. When I downloaded the image, I saw it contained the bonus of Jodi Rell's Snow White mug.

Link...

 

The third act of the tragedy of John Rowland – a short act of revenge - played itself out in the stage of American politics this week.

 

As the curtain rises, the audience sees a barren economic landscape. Our hero, a down on his luck politician with a federal corruption conviction on his record, sits in his easy chair reading a newspaper. He is trying to get his mind off the fact that his post-prison career as a motivational speaker isn't paying for his expensive tastes.

 

The headlines scream "Stock Market Plunge." It seems as if the Federal Reserve Bank can't utter a peep without sending stock markets across the globe into a tizzy.

 

Below that story, he scans another story about Congress and the President, a man who used to call him Johnny Boy, talking about an economic stimulus package that must be "timely, targeted and temporary."

 

Our tragic hero frowns when he gets to the third graf in the story and understands that the stimulus package hailed by the Bush administration – tax refunds to the citizen body - is stealing a page out of Johnny Boy's democratic laboratory book.

Link...

 

Gov. M. Jodi Rell expressed legitimate concern about the medicinal marijuana bill's lack of a distribution apparatus, yet her veto demonstrated her inability to lead, considering that in some polls, 83 percent of the people hold that certain types of ill persons should be able to use marijuana.

 

Rather than suggest a solution that people obviously want, Gov. Rell went against the will of the people, and those who suffer from AIDS wasting syndrome, cancer or a host of other illness remain criminals as they attempt to appropriate their medicine, which is better than most pharmaceuticals.

 

Now if a high school student brings the above two paragraphs to school and distributes them, that child may now be punished by school authorities, thanks to the ruling handed down by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts Monday afternoon in the Frederick v. Morse student free speech case from Alaska.

 

"We hold that schools may take steps to safeguard those entrusted to their care from speech that can reasonably be regarded as encouraging illegal drug use," Roberts wrote.

Link...

 

Frown at the cowardly spectacle of elected officials protecting their own. Only two legislators have called for the resignation of Republican Senator Lou DeLuca of Woodbury. Self-preservation has overcome public service as the motive for holding elective office.

Upon the arrest of Sen. DeLuca, past experience taught me to wait for justice to take its course to demand his resignation. But once a man is convicted of conspiring to threaten, of seeking to use violence to solve a dispute, he is not fit to govern himself, you, me, or anyone else.

DeLuca must resign for our state government to maintain any credibility with the voting public whatsoever. All three branches of government failed to apply the law fairly and honestly to DeLuca.

Link...

 

The Cool Justice Report has been following the slimy trail of Enfield's Democrat Mayor Patrick Tallarita, who is currently under investigation by the State's Attorney's Office for potential political corruption.

 

Just moments ago, Andy Thibault and Jim Brewer sent this one out:

BREAKING NEWS: Enfield Witness Intimidated

Tallarita Goes Berserk
At Shaw’s Supermarket;

Mayor Screams In Checkout Line
And Flips The Bird In Front Of Children
As He Threatens Witness
In Political Corruption Probe

The craziest part of the story is not the fact that Mayor Tallarita issued fighting words in front of children, or that the grocery store manager has it all on surveillance tape - no, the loopiest sentence to me is that Tallarita won't be running for re-election because he may be up for a job in Congressman Joe Courtney's office.

 

Tallarita was Courtney's campaign treasurer, which was probably in title only, as it is unlikely that Tallarita did anything more than sign off on the complex campign finance reports that detail the $2.45 million Courtney raised. In March of 2006, Tallarita gave $200 to Courtney's campaign, according to Opensecrets.org.

 

Link...

 

No story today. I've got a huge exam tonite, and I don't have time for anything, even from the archives.

 

Just a few notes, from this morning's crop of news:

 

Jon Lender over at the Courant has Kevin Deneen on the record saying that the Arts and Tourism lists came from Connecticut's own Karl Rove, M. Lisa Moody.

 

The comments thread is a trip. The first post challenges the Democrats in the house who went after Moody and Rell to look at Mike Lawlor and his call to a prosecutor about me.

 

And for everyone on the thread who said Rell is corrupt, people, you voted her in in a landslide. It's a little late to realize this now. There was a candidate out there who was talking about her corruption, but no one heard us, because Deneen and DeStefano silenced us. But that's old news.

 

The story here: all of us have ethical shortcomings. Admit when you've made a mistake. It's good for democracy.

 

"Any time people are forced to acknowledge publicly that they're wrong, it's really good for the commonweal," so said Stewart Brand back in February in the New York Times.

 

Will someone, somewhere in elected office have the guts to say they f*&*^d up? Woops, sorry. And please forgive me.

 

Maybe I'm dreaming. Back to civil procedure.

 

My attorney Norman Pattis pulls no punches, (and I love it). Even with people on my side, Norm has held up a mirror and said, hey, there's a wart. He pissed off SPJ, and this time, he is swinging at the legislature, in particular, Mike Lawlor and the Judiciary Committee, who has been on top of what happened to me. From Norm's blog:

I just don't get it. The judiciary has all but rolled over and died. Lawmakers are now aching to call the shots on court rulemaking, as though we need more hooplah from the part-timers over in the legislature. Have we not already learned that the legislature is the most dangerous branch of government?

 

Perhaps former Supreme Court Chief Justice William "Taco" Sullivan was right, lawmakers really can't be trusted to use judgment. They are prone to overreact and seek political advantage over trifles.

 

Sullivan's decision to delay publication of a controversial Supreme Court decision is by now the stuff of legend. He wanted to help along the nomination of Associate Justice Peter Zarella. Both Sullivan and Zarella had taken a position in the decision Sullivan thought might offend lawmakers. So he sat on the case for awhile.Then the law of unintended consequences kicked in.

Link to Pattis' Blog...

 

If just 5,000 committed people in each one of the 535 Congressional districts nationwide mobilized behind universal health care, America could have a single payer system, consumer advocate Ralph Nader said Friday night.

 

Nader appeared at Real Art Ways Friday night, March 30, in support of the Connecticut Premiere of An Unreasonable Man, the new documentary about his life. (Disclosure - the Nader folks paid me to promote the movie.) Click here to hear Colin McEnroe interview Ralph Thursday, which has similar talking points to what he said Friday night.

 

About 400 people showed up at Real Art Ways to see the movie - from former gubernatorial candidate Bill Curry to CCAG executive director Tom Swann to Manchester Journal-Inquirer managing editor Chris Powell.

 

It was a record-breaking crowd according to RAW staff, as no film in RAW history had ever drawn that many people for an opening.

 

The RAW theatre only seats 153 people (not including standing room). So while 50 people went away, 175 stayed in the main gallery to listen to Nader speak while the two hour, two minute long documentary rolled. An Unreasonable Man shows at RAW through April 5.

Link...

 

This look at the struggle between the executive and legislative branches in Connecticut over the control of the State Bond Commission agenda I wrote for the New Haven Advocate this week.

Dr. Ted Andreadis took the first pictures of the West Nile Virus in 1999 with a 13-year-old electron microscope in a small basement room at the New Haven Agricultural Experiment Station.

 

Last year, a pipe burst in the 75-year-old building, sending water cascading onto the sensitive microscope and ending its working life.

 

Luckily for Andreadis, the University of Florida has pledged to donate a similar microscope, provided the station pays the $16,000 shipping cost. But the new microscope will sit in the same aging basement room. While the pipe has been fixed, Andreadis and station director Louis Magnarelli worry that other maladies afflicting the hall—faulty wiring, exterior brick problems, other leaky pipes—could cause further trouble. A new microscope would set the station back $600,000.

Continue Reading in the New Haven Advocate...

 

Kelvin Roldán, the 28-year-old Democratic state representative from Hartford's Fourth district, is on this meteoric career path:

He started out five years ago as an aide to Mayor Eddie Perez. In the fall of 2006, he sacrificed that $74,000 a year salary to run for Evelyn Mantilla's seat, which he won. Then Monday, March 5, he landed an $89,000 job in the Hartford Public School System.

Roldán is now acting Director of Strategic Partnerships, Superintendent Steven J. Adamowski said Tuesday, March 6.

Link...

 

The concept of non-binding resolutions opposing the war in Iraq anger Sen. Chris Dodd.

"We need to get away from the non-binding proposals. They are infuriating," Dodd said this afternoon during a short conference call with Ned Lamont and Congressman John Larson.

"The House did better than the Senate in this regard," Dodd said during his three minute call. The call between Dodd, Larson and Lamont was piped into about 30 organizing meetings attended by around 1,000 people.

CTNewsjunkie.com covered more of the meetings held simultaneously across the state to help plan the March 17 anti-war rally at the Old State House in Hartford sponsored by COW - Connecticut Opposes War.

Link...

 

State Sen. Eric Coleman (D-Hartford-2) has proposed or co-sponsored 33 bills so far this session. His mass mail piece, aka franking,sent out at our taxpayer expense this week, focuses on two main issues: Health Care and Energy.

Now, when isn't a photo of a stethoscope in a trusting hand with the headline "Increasing Access to Affordable, Quality Healthcare" a sure vote getter? He wants to "promote preventive care" and "Expand HUSKY coverage." Who doesn't? Tell me how we pay for it, Senator.

And it's a safe bet to talk to inform constituents about "Smart, Affordable Energy for Today and Tomorrow." Sadly, Sen. Coleman avoids any talk about reducing our reliance on fossil fuels or what he is doing as a representative to work towards a solution.

But, hey, it's a free campaign ad. I prefer instead to go straight to the source, and look at the 31 other measures he is involved in.

Link...